Henry Campkin

“ By Mark Antony Lower.
"Eheu fugaces anni! How have the years fled since my life commenced, and my literary career began! At first sight it seems almost absurd for any man to sit down to the serious and laborious task of his own biography. As years increase, our years, our months, our weeks seem to become shorter. ”

“ Lewes has a famous Antiquary—the great authority on surnames—Mr. Mark Antony Lower. He is a gentleman with more poetry in him than most of the Dryasdust School: witness his picturesque presentment of the Sussex villages—clusters of lowly habitations, some thatched, some tiled, some abutting the street, some standing angularly towards it, all built of flint or boulders. ”

“ Durrant Cooper's communications to our pages must be attributed, not merely to the scanty leisure of an active professional life, but also to the large demands upon his time and pen, which were made by the Sussex Archaeological Society, to whose volumes his contributions are at once abundant and valuable. Of the services, however, which he rendered to this Society, his contributions to our Transactions would give a very inadequate idea. It is in the records of our committees that we shall find the proof of his zealous attachment to our body. ”

“ It has been said, over and over again, that the life of a student and man of letters seldom affords much to relate of a personal character, and the life of Mark Antony Lower can hardly be said to be an exception to this rule. ”

“ My meaning is, as I advance to threescore years, to put upon simple record some of the events of a life which, though not altogether uneventful, has been that of a simple, unambitious man, a life which, though somewhat queer and picturesque, has not been marked by any deeds of a stirring or sensational character, though it may yet be worthy of record for the information of the coming generation. ”

“ I was born in the obscure agricultural village of Chiddingly, in the Weald of Sussex, 14th July, 1813. My father, Richard Lower, was a schoolmaster of the old-fashioned middle-class of his profession. Without being what is called a scholar, he was a man of varied attainments. He had few associations except with farmers and tradesmen. There was in the somewhat extensive parish no resident squire or clergyman, and hence he became the factotum of the district. He was an excellent practical mathematician, and a land-surveyor of considerable note. ”

“ William Cooper, incensed at the conduct of all the butchers of the town, who, like all the lawyers of the town, except himself, voted against his chosen candidate, hit upon the novel vengeance of opening an opposition butcher's shop in Saint Anne's, painting over it, in conspicuous letters, "William Cooper, Butcher," and under-sold the blue-aproned trade in their own commodities, at the rate of one penny per pound—a consideration in those dear days—until they capitulated, and, as the story goes, promised to support his candidate at the next election ”

“ Lower succumbed to the malady under which she had been suffering, and her husband, in the thirtieth year of his wedded life, a life which, in regard to his domestic happiness, had been all that he could have desired or anticipated, found himself a bereaved widower, at a season when he could ill spare so loved and loving a partner. ”

“ Throughout the whole course of the Hebrew, the Classical, and the Middle Ages, down to our own days, a passion has existed for narrating the lives of men; and though the autobiographies are few in comparison with the 'memoirs' (as they are commonly called) yet by a critical examination of the works of poets and novelists we shall very often find, running through the thread of their writings, reminiscences of their lives, amounting almost to autobiographies. ”

“ We seem to be as 'of yesterday, and to know nothing.' Yet I never met with a man who, in spite of all his infirmities, his failures, his sins, would like to live his life over again: the probability being very strong that it would be merely a repetition of infirmity, of failure, and of sin. ”

“ Still, the practice of writing men's lives, either autobiographically or by the pens of others, has prevailed from the very dawn of literature. The oldest written book extant informs us that 'there was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job,' and furnishes us with his history, and the opinions of himself and his contemporaries. ”

“ This view is borne out by the Report prefixed to the first volume of the Society's Collections, where it appears that "the first meeting which defined the objects and established the rules of the Society, took place on June 18th, 1846, at the suggestion of a few gentlemen in the town and neighbourhood of Lewes, who, observing the interest excited by some recent antiquarian discoveries, were anxious to promote a readier acquaintance among persons attached to the same pursuits, and to combine their exertions in illustration of the History and Antiquities of Sussex." ”

“ In the garden of a next-door neighbour grew a handsome pear tree, which, in proper season, bore a full crop of fruit, and stood in tempting proximity to, in fact overhung, the dividing wall, between the school play-ground and the aforesaid garden. "Where is the school-boy who would not covet his neighbour's goods when, day after day, they thus as it were stimulated the desire of possession and enjoyment? ”

“ Cooper would seem not to have been a contributor to the Percy Society volumes, while one volume only of the kindred Society claims him as its editor. The truth is that the staple commodity with which these Societies dealt belonged rather to the region of fancy than of fact, Still, the one volume for which the Shakespeare Society is indebted to him, Ralph Roister Doister, a Comedy, by Nicholas Udall. ”

“ Sir John was the principal, if not the sole, proprietor of the now defunct Morning Chronicle, and Mr. Cooper, in addition to his endeavours to establish himself in his profession, accepted a post on the parliamentary staff of that (in its day) influential Whig journal. After a while he accepted similar employment on the Times, but some new division of labour in the corps of reporters on the establishment of that leviathan broad-sheet, which would have interfered with his allotment of the daytime to his professional practice, ultimately led to his severance from a journalistic career. ”

“ Skelton Castle is a potent entity in the estimation of every admirer of Laurence Sterne, for it is the Crazy Castle of that most original (and, perhaps, most plagiaristic) of our great English authors, and his Eugenius was none other than the castle's then owner, John Hall Stevenson, himself the author of three humorous volumes—a shade too free, it may be, for the present generation—entitled "Crazy Tales." ”

“ Mark Antony Lower, a far humbler light in the literary firmament, also, to use a word which was a favourite with him, "endeavoured" a sketch of his career. The fragment which he has thus left behind him, is, alas! too brief to do more than exhibit its hero's advent upon life's threshold ”

“ Then, for Prince Louis Lucien Bonaparte's renderings of the Song of Solomon into the various provincial dialects, he furnished a version in the Sussex vernacular, a task for which he was well qualified, and in which he succeeded to the full satisfaction of the Prince.
His Stranger at Rouen, a Guide for Englishmen (it can be bought in London, of Mr. Russell Smith) is a little book well adapted to its unambitious purpose. The descriptive text to Nibbs's Churches of Sussex is also from his pen. ”

“ Stone throwing was resorted to, a fall of fruit resulted, but, unfortunately, broken windows resulted also. The neighbour complained of his fractured glass; the schoolmaster apologised, promised punishment of the offenders, and offered to send in a glazier to repair the damage done. "No!" said the good-natured sufferer, "I will take that charge upon myself, and, by way of truce with your young scapegraces, I will send in a basket of pears annually, and they shall covenant to do my trees and windows no further harm!" ”

“ It would have been strange if, with his peculiar bias, the disgracefully neglected state of our Parish Registers, so much excitement about which prevailed some forty or fifty years ago, had not, even from a professional point of view, forced itself on Mr. Cooper's attention. ”

“ A jury is summoned at each leet, and this jury presents the names of the High Constables and Headboroughs for the ensuing year, and, according to ancient custom, the Steward accepts the nomination thus made, and the officers so nominated are sworn in by him. Other occasions also arise on which leets are held, and the small fees payable to the steward constitute the principal, if not the sole, emoluments of his office, and it may well be imagined that the prestige attaching to the post is of quite as much importance as its pecuniary profits. ”

“ Some three years after this removal he took for his second wife a maiden lady whom he had long known—Miss Sarah Scrase—of an old and respectable family, originally Danish, long settled in Sussex. Soon after this second marriage, namely, in 1871, he left his native county entirely, to reside in London or its immediate neighbourhood, in order to apply himself, as far as his impaired health would permit, to literary pursuits. ”

“ Mr. Lower took no active part in the municipal affairs of Lewes; he served as one of the Headboroughs in the year 1860-1861, but never held any other prominently public office.
It is as one of the originators of the Sussex Archæological Society, and one of the chief co-operators in its valuable Collections both by his pen and pencil, that the name of Mark Antony Lower will ever deserve to be remembered with the highest honour. And as he was one of the pioneers of the movement, so was he the last survivor of the six coadjutors, Messrs. ”

“ And the bulk of his several communications is in quite an inverse proportion to the painstaking research required for their production. No writer could possibly be more anxious than he was, even in his slightest contribution, to arrive at the absolute facts in any particular case. ”

“ He acquired so great a proficiency in election law as to be regarded as a safe authority therein, and always displaying great courage and talent, he generally won the applause of his opponents, even when they were on the losing side. ”

“ This is a wise arrangement of Heaven, for if the contrary feeling were indulged, and a redivivus were granted to men, ere long would the world become choke-full of Methuselahs, and forthcoming generations would have to migrate to the uninhabited planets, if, indeed, any such really exist. ”

“ Cooper was chiefly engaged, were conveyancing and parliamentary agency, but it may be added that his practice was at no time extensive, and he consequently never realised more than a modest income.
On the death of his uncle, Mr. Frederick Cooper, who was private solicitor to the then Duke of Norfolk, Mr. Cooper was appointed the Duke's steward of the Leet Court of the Borough of Lewes. ”

“ Parham and its Collections forms the commencing article in Vol. xxv; and this (save two inconsiderable notes in Vol. xxvi.) is the final contribution from the indefatigable pen which death alone could stay.
But the foregoing catalogue, full as it is, does not embrace all the printed communications of William Durrant Cooper to the volumes of, nor does it even refer to other valuable services rendered by him to, the Sussex Archæological Society. Nearly a column, on pages 96 and 97, of the General Index to our volumes, is devoted to his Minor Communications ”

“ On Mr. Cooper's retirement from the Editorship of the Society's Collections, in 1865, the Committee, "considering the propriety of appointing a Salaried Editor and Corresponding Secretary," resolved that "Mark Antony Lower, Esq. F.S.A., be appointed" to the joint office, "with such remuneration as the Committee may think his time and labour demand." In 1870 his continued ill-health compelled him to retire from this office, on which occasion the following resolution was entered on the Minutes of the Society's proceedings:—
"Having accepted the resignation by Mr. ”

“ The human element is, in both these papers, admirably blended with the precision of a legally trained mind.—H.C. ↑ For a rectification of an erroneous inference in this paper, relative to Pepys, the diarist, see 25 S. A. C. 234, 235. ↑ The author of this pleasant paper, "Through Sussex," was the late Mortimer Collins, who died in July, 1876, and whose vigorous, yet remarkably graceful, vers de société gave such a charm to the columns of Punch. ”

“ Containing an Index to the first Twenty Volumes of the Sussex Archaeological Collections. By Mark Antony Lower, M.A. Lewes: G. P. Bacon. 1870. Two volumes. 8vo.
Historical and Genealogical Notices of the Pelham Family. By Mark Antony LOWER, M.A., F.S.A. Privately printed. 1873. Folio. Of this handsome example of typography from Mr. Bacon's press, a very few copies only were printed.
Sundry smaller, but not unimportant, publications merit a short notice, such as his Handbook for Lewes, which, first issued in 1846, has since passed through several editions. ”